


Not Loneliness or Even Love

by szm



Category: Torchwood
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-21
Updated: 2012-03-21
Packaged: 2017-11-02 08:05:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 745
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/366822
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/szm/pseuds/szm
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tosh looks back at what happened with Mary</p>
            </blockquote>





	Not Loneliness or Even Love

After Mary Owen wouldn’t talk to Tosh, would barely even look at her. It was better than the pitying looks she would occasionally catch Gwen giving her, and it wasn’t like she didn’t deserve the cold shoulder, but still.

A couple of days later Owen finally, out of the blue, said, “I guess you were lonely, it’s not like you had a lot else going on.”

It was horrible, and hurtful, and the closest Owen was ever going to get to forgiveness or sympathy. Owen assumed it had happened because Tosh was lonely, Gwen assumed she had been in love. Ianto hadn’t assumed anything, just listened. Tosh couldn’t find the words to express how much she’d appreciated that. And Jack, well who knew what he really thought about anything.

But it hadn’t been loneliness, or even love.

It wasn’t that she couldn’t see where it was heading. Mary, even before Tosh learned she was an alien, didn’t quite seem right. Didn’t quite fit. Even when they first met, she knew too much about the wrong things. Too much about Tosh. Tosh shouldn’t even have carried on talking to her. She should have left.

_“I should go,”  
“So go.”_

That half smirk and the absolute confidence that Toshiko wasn’t going anywhere. Tosh wished she was that sure about anything in her life. Tosh couldn’t leave.

No, that wasn’t it. Tosh didn’t _want_ to leave. It was dangerous and stupid but Tosh liked that confidence, liked that she was the focus of it. Liked that, for once, someone was interested in her.

So Tosh stayed. Willing prey. Not for Mary necessarily but for something inside herself. Something that _wanted_.

The wanting only got worse, it was never satisfied. Mary fed it. With words, and telepathic necklaces, and flesh. Even afterwards when Tosh knew what Mary was, what she had done, Tosh could still taste her. Could still smell her. Feel her under her fingertips, the smoothness of her skin. Could still hear the little gasp she would make if Tosh kissed her in just the right place. Tosh still wanted to have that after everything Mary had done, everything _Tosh_ had done. That wanting still lurked inside her. If Jack hadn’t killed Mary she may have gone back, just for one more taste.

It hurt, more than Owen’s silence, the knowledge that she could be the kind of person who would betray others to feed her own desires. Like Mary was.

Touching Mary, being with her was like completing a circuit. Like finding the answer to an equation. It was exciting and thrilling and it made Tosh feel... visible. Like she really existed, like she mattered. It gave her back something she thought she’d lost in a UNIT cell years ago.

The pendent showed all the darkness in the world, Ianto was drowning in it, Owen and Gwen were clinging to each other, and Jack wasn’t even really there. But Mary was.

She was blinding, the way she looked, the way she dressed, the way she just _was_. She knew what one look could do to Tosh and she knew that Tosh knew it too. It was their secret. Something shining in the dark.

Mary was a liar and a killer, it should be easy to blame her for all of it. She made Tosh do things that Tosh would never normally do. But it wasn’t that simple, wasn’t that clean. Mary unlocked a part of Tosh that wanted and didn’t care about anything else. The worst of it was that Tosh liked it.

If the others hadn’t stopped it the whole experience would have ended with Mary tearing her heart out. Literally. Tosh would have let her. Because by that point she was lost and frightened. Despairing and hurting and actually alive for the first time in her whole life. 

_”I guess you were lonely, it’s not like you have a lot else going on.”_

Over and done with now. At least as far as Owen is concerned. Life back to normal. With Tosh firmly in the corner with her numbers and computers and nothing else. Being happy with that, not wanting at all.

When she got home that night Mary’s ashtray was still on the kitchen counter. A simple glass ashtray. Tosh picked it up and turned it over in her hands. Then with great force and a savage cry she hurled it across the kitchen and watched it smash into pieces against the wall.


End file.
